For the uninitiated, native advertising is branded content that appears as an ad or sponsored post on a social network or publishing site. Social sites such as Buzzfeed, Tumblr, Twitter, and even Facebook have led the trend, making their ads more integrated into the articles they publish and less of an interruption for users.

Think of Promoted Tweets that show up in your Twitter stream or the sponsored posts from Old Navy or Virgin Mobile on Buzzfeed. Besides more social sites, publishers including The Atlantic, Boston.co, and Mashable have all introduced native ad options in recent weeks. Most recently, Skype announced that it will expand its advertising platform in 2013 to include native ad types such as interactive video placements.

For advertisers, these native formats have pros and cons. To start, the company must prepare unique ads for each platform they advertise on, in order to seamlessly fit in with the content, as opposed to creating one display ad to spread out over various platforms. That takes time and money. But the ads generally perform better.

However, like advertorials and other types of branded content before them, native advertising can be misleading or confusing for readers and users. In October 2012, in-app social and mobile advertising company MediaBrix found that 88 percent of US internet users said they had been confused by a video that looked like regular content but turned out to be an ad. Additionally, Facebook’s Sponsored Stories and Twitter’s Promoted Tweets had also been misleading for 57 percent and 45 percent of respondents, respectively.

While consumers aren’t thrilled about most ads out there, they believe ads should tell a story. According to Adobe’s State of Online Advertising study from October 2012, 68 percent of consumers think online advertising is annoying and 73 percent said that advertisements should tell a unique story, not just try to sell a product.

Looking at the black community specifically, 62 percent of black consumers that digitally connect with a mobile devices told Nielsen they are OK with advertising if it means they can access content for free.

According to several sources including Nielsen, black consumers also respond better to advertising that is inclusive of their community and relevant to their lives. By creating a unique native ad, brands can connect with the black audience in a way that other types of advertising just can’t do.

Therefore, if you have to sit through ads, wouldn’t you rather have them not interrupt your experience, tell an interesting and relevant story, and fit into the overall theme and feel of the site you’re currently on?

Many are heralding native advertisements as the next game-changer in advertising. Others note that it is just advertorials for the internet age. However, with the growing interest in these types of ads, and the attitudes consumers have toward them, this is a shift in online advertising.

By focusing on angles that are interesting to customers—storytelling, relevant content, integrated experiences—advertising can become less annoying and more eye-catching and shareable, traits that are necessary in this social-sharing age. And while users aren’t thrilled with the sometimes misleading nature of native ads, this shift will eventually lead to advertising that will work seamlessly for consumers.

Last Friday, Google released a study they considered to be “digital truths” about the African American consumer. The study, conducted by independent market research firm Ipsos OTX MediaCT noticed that it appeared more African-Americans were using their smartphone to access the Internet.

That isn’t surprising, since other studies have shown that African-Americans tend to trail whites when it comes owning a personal desktop computer and utilizing broadband internet. The Google survey participants in both groups were aged 18-64, avid Internet users that have made either an auto, tech, retail consumer packaged good, healthcare or fast food purchase in the last 6 months. After compiling the initial results, the study was then compared to a relative sampling of the U.S. population, before the data was made public.

The results show that African-Americans were more likely to own smartphones at a higher rate than the others surveyed (53 percent vs. 45 percent) making them quicker to click on smartphone ads of various sponsors. The rates of smartphone ad recall were the highest of any group at 40 percent.

Torrence Boone, managing director and agency development business development at Google noted that while the survey finds were interesting, there isn’t a lot of detailed research when it comes to the digital behavior of an multi-cultural community, which is why certain aspects of the study were really surprising, especially when it came to analyzing the mobile landscape.

Although, approximately one-third (35 percent) of American adults owned a smartphone of some kind, of those that owned, the highest groups were African-Americans and Latinos at 44 percent.

According to the survey, not only does the African-American community seem to own smartphone devices, the data also shows that the use of the phone goes outside of ad click rates. In most cases, African-Americans are more likely to use their phone to watch video, use apps and manage their finances. It was also noted that African-American community were also more versed in their pre-purchase research compared to other representative groups.

At the same time, an earlier study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project yielded similar results, in that 35 percent of Americans use smartphones and that smartphone adoption was highest among the affluent and well-educated, the young and non-whites.

Cynthia Wright is an avid lover of all things geeky. When she isn’t freelancing, she can be found on her blog BGA Life and on Twitter at @cynisright.

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About This Episode

Karine Méhu is proof that sometimes you really can have it all. As the Director of Digital Marketing at ESPN, Ms. Méhu oversees the creation and implementation of ideas that must be as practical as they are creative. ESPN's advertisers depend on her to execute campaigns that capture consumers' attention and spending money.

This dedicated young professional gets up at 4 am everyday and is somehow finding the time to plan her wedding even as she racks up professional accolades and puts in long hours at a job she loves. Soak up some of her career wisdom and find out why she's the boss!